On 2 December 1911, Douglas Mawson led
an expedition from Hobart to explore the virgin
coastline of Antarctica. After setting up Main
Base at Cape Denision and Western Base
on Queen Mary Land, he headed east on an
extraordinary sledging trek with his companions,
Belgrave Ninnis and Dr Xavier Mertz.
After five weeks, tragedy struck. Ninnis was
swallowed whole by a snow-covered crevasse, and
Mawson and Mertz realised it was too dangerous
to go on. On the return journey, hunger, sickness
and despair eventually got the better of Mertz,
and he succumbed to madness and then to death.
Mawson found himself all alone, 258 kilometres
from safety, with next to no food.
Peter FitzSimons tells the staggering tale of
Mawson’s survival despite all the odds. He also
masterfully interweaves the stories of the other
giants from the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration
– Scott of the Antarctic, Sir Ernest Shackleton
and Roald Amundsen, bringing the jaw-dropping
events of this bygone era dazzlingly back to life.
‘Douglas Mawson was a great scientist, a great explorer
and a great Australian. I am in awe of what he, and other
explorers, accomplished in such a short time.’
Peter FitzSimons
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PETER
FITZSIMONS
AUSTRALIA’S
GREATEST ANTARCTIC
EXPLORER
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